


Wolves in the Timber

by Juxtaposie



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: A comedy of errors, Alcohol, Bars, Birthday, Clubbing, Drama & Romance, Drugs, F/M, Gen, General Debauchery, Humor, Lots of past relationships, Multi, Ronnie is a good bad influence, also some language, and some mild sexual content, have fun, lots of drunk shenanigans, nothing super graphic, so much dialogue, whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-14 08:33:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11779356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juxtaposie/pseuds/Juxtaposie
Summary: "... A snarling, distrustful, bickering pack... the street gangs in New York or the wolves in the timber."- The Outsiders“Please, Jug? I know the two of you aren’t a thing anymore, but you’re still one of her best friends. I know it would mean a lot to her to have you there.”Aye, there’s the rub, he couldn't help thinking, because everything Veronica had just said was true - everything except the part about him and Betty."OR - Betty turns 21, and Jughead can't even enjoy anyone else's birthday anymore. A sequel, of sorts, to Take Two.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to do a fic like this for basically every single fandom I've ever been in. I'll never know why Riverdale moved me to action, or why this ended up quite so fucking _long_. Seriously, it's over 13k.
> 
> Posted with minimal editing because I need it off my chest. 
> 
> Enjoy.

It was 8:17 when Veronica tried to FaceTime him. 

He didn't answer, because it was obviously a mistake, but when it happened again Jughead was forced to admit to himself it was probably intentional. He still didn't answer. He was on his third set of editor’s notes, and he had a paper due in two days (that he still hadn't started). There was a photography project that still needed editing, and he had a test on Thursday. Whatever Veronica Lodge wanted on the Sunday evening before finals week, it could obviously wait. 

Except apparently it couldn't because she didn't stop. After the fourth failed call he got a text that said _I KNOW UR THERE PICK UP_. He let two more calls come through before he answered.

“We know what you’re getting Betty for her birthday,” Veronica said without preamble. Kevin was waggling his fingers at the phone screen over her shoulder, and they were both obviously more than halfway to trashed. 

“I’m fine, Veronica, thanks for asking,” he replied, a wide smile stretched sarcastically across his face. “It’s nice to see you too. And I already got her a present.”

Kevin groaned dramatically. “A book that makes you want to cut your own throat isn’t a good twenty-first birthday present.”

Jughead made an offended noise. “It’s a fir-”

“It’s a very good present,” Veronica broke in, looking pointedly at Kevin, “and B will love it. But you know what she would love even more?”

Jug sighed, and covered his eyes with one hand. “I already told you-”

Veronica made a shushing noise while she flapped her hand at him. “I know what you told me. And now I’m telling _you_ that you know how much it’ll mean to her if you come. Or when you come. Because you _are_ coming.”

“And since I’m in Riverdale, and the party isn’t, that’s going to happen how?”

“Oh good, you’re in!” Veronica exclaimed as if the matter was settled. “The last bus to NYC leaves from Greendale at three o’clock on Friday. If your British Lit final is out at noon, that’s plenty of time to throw some hoodies in a duffel bag and make it to the station.”

He had a lot of questions, but the most pressing one didn't have anything to do with her plans: “How do you know my class schedule?”

She did the hand flapping thing again, accompanied by an eye roll. “Please.”

“She bought you a bus ticket,” Kevin said from off-screen. “You’re her birthday present.”

“She’s thro- You’re throwing the party!” Jug had to rub a hand over his face. Six years of knowing Veronica Lodge, and she still managed to astound him with her complete lack of boundaries. “If I’m your present, then what am _I_ supposed to get her?”

“You!” Ronnie said, gesticulating so excitedly that the drink in her cup sloshed over the rim. “You are going to be the Sober Person!” 

Jughead couldn’t stop himself from grimacing. “No offense, Veronica, but the thought of herding a bunch of drunk people around on the subway is horrifyingly close to my own personal version hell.”

The phone wobbled as she put her drink down, but when she came back into frame she was wearing her Business Face. “You’ll just be responsible for Betty and making sure we don’t get lost. You don’t have to make any plans, or have anything to drink, and no one-” she paused to shoot another glare at Kevin, “- is going to try and make you dance. Just come, and sit in a corner. Hell, bring a book if you want!” He must have still been grimacing, because her eyes softened a little when she said, “Please, Jug? I know the two of you aren’t a thing anymore, but you’re still one of her best friends. I know it would mean a lot to her to have you there.”

 _Aye, there’s the rub_ , he couldn't help thinking, because everything Veronica had just said was true - everything except the part about him and Betty. 

They’d broken up the very last week of summer, after their senior year. It had been mutual, and only a little messy, but with Betty moving four hours away, and both of their insane schedules - her twenty-seven hours at NYU, and his fledgling attempts to balance a full-time job and a part-time class schedule - it had seemed like the only option. In separate cities, with no time to spare, four hours might as well have been fourteen. 

But then they’d come crashing back together over winter break, when they’d spent an entire weekend holed up in his tiny studio apartment having sex. The same thing had happened again when she’d come home for the summer, but they’d still parted ways in August, when she’d moved back to the city. 

(Three weeks later, Archie had told him that Betty had been dating someone semi-seriously, but had broken it off before returning to Riverdale. Jughead didn’t have to ask to know he’d gotten the gossip from Veronica, but what he really wanted to know was why Veronica hadn’t told him herself. More than that, why hadn’t Betty?)

It had happened like wonderful, frustrating clockwork, for two and a half years: Betty would leave, Jughead would bury himself in his everyday drudgery for a few months, Betty would come home, they’d spend as much time as possible as intimately as possible, and then Betty would leave again.

He would never know what had changed that last Christmas break, why she'd rolled to face him, still glowing with post-coital bliss, and said, “Let's get back together.” The words had been stuck in the back of his own throat for longer than he’d been comfortable with - basically since she’d gone away to NYU - so they’d gone from not talking for months to skyping almost every night. 

They still hadn’t told anybody. 

It wasn’t until Veronica and Kevin were both chanting his name, loudly, rhythmically, that he remembered he was still on the phone.

“Fuck,” he said. “Fine, yes. Jesus.”

Veronica squealed, Kevin clapped, and then they were toasting each other and talking a mile a minute. It took him longer than he was proud of to realize none of it was directed at him, and it was quite a task to call them back to order. 

“You’re a peach!” Ronnie extolled, blowing him kisses while Kevin attempted to grab her glass so she’d stop spilling. “Betty’s going to flip! I’ll text you details. We’ll see you on Friday!” She made to end the call, but then her eyebrows lifted and she said, “Oh! Wear something nice. Like nice-nice, not you-nice.”

And before he could protest she’d hung up.

The promised text (which ended up being a Google docs link to a three-page itinerary) came when he was calling Betty. He hated to ruin Veronica’s surprise - because, unlike him, Betty loved surprises - but it seemed cruel to show up unannounced at a drunken debauch he’d already told her her wouldn’t be attending. The phone rang fives times, and he was just about to hang up when she answered. 

“Jug?” Betty said sleepily on the other end. “Y’okay?”

He felt guilty and lovesick at the same time. Quietly, he asked, “Were you asleep?” and she hummed a positive response. He couldn’t stop himself from adding, “It’s barely nine.”

“I wanna run before my 7am lab final,” she offered. “M’tired. What’s up?”

Jughead chewed on his bottom lip before finally saying, “Nothing. Just wanted to hear your voice. Go back to sleep.”

“Kay,” she mumbled, already dropping off again. There was a long pause, then, finally, a mumbled, “Love you.” The line went dead before he could return the sentiment.

 

 

Jughead finished his British Lit final at 11:49, the third to last to leave the classroom. Earlier in his life that would have embarrassed the hell out of him, but he’d learned to let go of being ashamed about the free-flowing words that fell from his hands. He still wasn’t a public speaker - he wouldn’t ever be - but pen to paper he was as confident as Kerouac. 

(His grade on the final was 112 out of 100, to round out his 4.0 for the semester.)

It had been an easy thing to get out of work for the weekend. He’d already had Sunday off, but the minute he’d said “Betty’s birthday” on the phone Fred Andrews had simply told him to have a good time and hung up. He’d been packed for two days, and once back at his apartment it was a short task to shower and change. He’d have to wear his “nice-nice” clothes on the bus; if there was no traffic, he’d be in NYC by 7:00, and they had an 8:30 dinner reservation. The chances of finding time to change were unlikely. He wasn’t sure Veronica would approve of his outfit, but he only owned one button-up that wasn’t plaid flannel, and his nicest pair of pants were the dark jeans _without_ the holes. That would have to do. 

After double-checking his wallet - ID, debit card, cash, bus ticket - the only thing left to pack was Betty’s present. He’d stowed the first edition of S.E. Hinton’s _The Outsiders_ safely away in the top drawer of his dresser. The dust jacket was long gone, lost to the ethers of time, so he hadn’t bothered to wrap it. He entertained the idea again while running a hand along the spine, but that would have meant wrapping paper, or at least newsprint, and he didn’t have either. Besides, the book itself would be wrapping enough. The real surprise was tucked inside the cover: a letter of acceptance for transfer to Columbia University.

He still hadn’t told a single soul aside from FP, and the man had damn near cried. The only thing that had kept Jughead from crying himself was the overwhelming shock he’d still been feeling even a few days after getting the letter in the mail. He’d been waiting to tell Betty in person when she came home for the summer. They’d also been planning to hash out their newly reformed relationship. Now, they would either have to spend the weekend dancing around each other, or dancing around their friends. 

He’d never managed to get ahold of Betty again. 

 

 

The bus made good time, though they got stuck in traffic just outside Manhattan. Once on the street, he debated taking a cab, but decided to spend the money on a MetroCard and brave the subway instead. All in all, it wasn’t nearly as terrifying as the movies made it out to be - few things were - and it was a little before 8:00 by the time he was in the lobby of what was, almost certainly, the nicest building he’d ever been permitted to enter. It made the Pembrooke look like the trailer park he’d grown up in. The elevator was crowded, and he had to cram in beside a woman whose engagement ring had a diamond the size of his thumbnail in it. She also had, he discovered quickly, a vicious side eye. He had brief thoughts of sinking into the floor or yelling _I was invited here, damnit!_ , but in the end he settled for watching the numbers change above the doors. Their pace was positively glacial, and he was more than a little relieved when she finally got off on the thirty-sixth floor. 

On the fifty-second floor, there were only four doors, and he knew immediately which one his friends were behind because Marina and the Diamonds was blasting loud enough to be heard even from the elevator. He had to knock twice to be heard over the din, before the door was finally opened by a young woman he recognized from pictures but had never actually met. 

“Hey!” Margaret Dozier - Betty’s roommate for the last three years - said, waving excitedly before offering him her hand. Her grip was surprisingly firm, and her short hair had been dyed an alarming shade of purple. “We were worried you weren’t gonna make it! We’re about to head down to dinner. Jughead, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, hoping his grimace looked enough like a smile. “You’re… Maggie?”

She laughed. “Margie. It’s nice to finally meet you. Lizzie literally never shuts up about you.”

At his blank look, she laughed again, and then ushered him into the suite. “I know, it’s been weird hearing y’all call her Betty.”

He’d barely dropped his bag in the entryway before Archie was pushing bodily past Margie to sweep him into a bone-crushing bro hug, complete with the aggressive back patting. His smile was blinding and sincere, and Jughead felt his shoulders relaxing at the familiarity.

“It’s good to see you, man!” Archie exclaimed in a too-loud whisper. “Ronnie didn’t tell me you were coming until last night. Does Betty know?”

“Nope,” Polly said excitedly, coming up behind Jughead to wrap both of them in a hug. She was already three sheets to the wind. “It’s a total surprise!” Archie released him, and then Polly stepped in front of him, put her hands on his shoulders, and said, “It’s _really_ good to see you, Jug.” She gave him a long, pointed look, before standing on her toes to press a kiss against his cheek, and in that instant, he knew she _knew_. “Cheryl!” she called when she pulled away. “Come say hi!”

“Bring me a bowl of glass to chew first,” Cheryl said evenly from the couch, not bothering to look up from her phone screen. 

“Isn’t she a trip?” Margie said at his elbow while Polly rolled her eyes. He was so busy looking around the suite - the far wall was floor-to-ceiling glass, overlooking Central Park - that he took the drink she pressed into his hands without protest. “Veronica too,” she went on. “I’ve never been around so many Blair Waldorf types, but I’m enjoying the fuck out of it. You grew up with these chicks?”

“Sort of,” Jughead said. Margie was standing close enough for him to realize that pictures hadn’t done her justice. She was a _lot_ taller than he’d imagined - almost as tall as Archie. “Where’s-”

“The birthday girl?” Margie eyed his drink before taking a sip of her own and gesturing toward a set of closed double doors. “They’re doing finishing touches. Or something. I’m not sure. You’re not drinking.”

“He’s kind of a teetotaler,” Archie said from his place by the stereo. 

“No I’m not,” Jughead retorted, but ruined it by setting his glass down on the nearest flat surface. 

“Don’t tease him,” Polly called from the couch, where she was looking at Cheryl’s phone over the other girl’s shoulder. 

Margie made a face. “Shit, I’m sorry. You’re supposed to be the DD.”

“I think Veronica called it the Sober Person,” he replied, shoving his hands in his pockets. “But yeah, I’m here to make sure no one gets lost, or… dies.”

“Which reminds me,” Cheryl said. It wasn’t until she’d risen from the couch and approached him that Jughead realized she was finally deigning to address him. She pulled a business card out of her blouse - not a pocket on her blouse, her actual _blouse_ \- and shook it under his nose until he took it. “This is my personal physician’s private number, and on the back is a list of allergies. If I aspirate vomit, or OD, call him immediately after calling an ambulance.”

“Maybe just drink some water?” he offered, but she was already breezing back to the couch. She plopped down by Polly, and then he caught Archie’s muttered, “Maybe just don’t do coke,” and the rest of her words finally registered. “Wait, no - OD?”

Margie choked on her drink laughing when Polly said, “I wouldn’t worry too much. I doubt there’s enough coke-”

“Why is there _any_ coke?” he demanded. 

Polly and Cheryl both looked at him, their eyes wide, before Cheryl said, “It’s a birthday party,” like that explained everything, and Polly made what Jughead had deemed the Alice Cooper Face of False Placation. He wondered if Polly and Betty knew they both emulated it when they were trying to get their way. 

Jughead could feel the retort burning on the tip of his tongue - something scathing, no doubt, because he never really knew what was going to fall out of his mouth until it fell - but the words never left him, because the double doors opened and three people tripped through them, all in varying stages of inebriation. Kevin came first, in gray slacks and an emerald green button-up, with a martini glass in each hand. Veronica, in a tight dress as black as her hair, was second, and being pulled behind her, their hands clasped together, was Betty, resplendent in a pink dress so pale it was almost white. 

Seeing her again after so many months (she hadn’t come home for Spring break; she’d gone to Cabo with some of her friends) - it was like being punched in the gut. There was a slow-motion moment, like something out of a movie, where her eyes roamed around the room, sliding right past him for a split-second before she did a double-take. Her hair was longer than he remembered, the soft curls bouncing as her bright pink lips parted in a wide, surprised smile. There was another martini glass in her free hand, but she pushed it at Veronica, crossed the room, and threw herself into his arms. 

The only thing he could do was catch her. 

Someone was clapping, and there was a lot of hollering going on, but Jughead couldn’t hear any of it over the blood thundering in his ears. Betty’s arms were locked around his neck, her breath hot on his cheek. She was shouting wordlessly, a noise of pure excitement, and she smelled like perfume and makeup and vodka. 

He had to stop himself from touching her face when she pulled away. There was a heated moment where he could tell she wanted to kiss him, but it passed quickly, and then she was moving back, clasping both his hands in her own. “What are you doing here?” she breathed, so quietly he could barely hear it over the music. “I thought you couldn’t come!”

There was only one response to that. Veronica had come up behind her, so Jughead put his hands on Betty’s shoulders and turned her toward her beaming friend. “I had a little help,” he said, and then Betty was hugging Veronica with all the same fierceness she’d bestowed on him moments before. Betty reached out, groping blindly behind her until she snagged his sleeve and pulled him against her back, and then Archie was pressing in on him, and Polly was at his side, and then Kevin and Margie were all there with their arms around Betty (and him). He let his eyes roam around the room, trying to ignore the way his whole body was tensing at so much unexpected physical contact. Cheryl was staring at him from the couch. Their eyes met, and her smile was positively wicked. 

“Alright!” Veronica said finally, shaking everyone off. Jughead was reluctant to let go of Betty, but there was no we’re-just-friends way to keep holding her waist. He moved away as soon as Archie made some room, but Ronnie still gave him a searching look before flicking her hair back over her shoulder and turning to the rest of the room. “We have a schedule, people. Dinner is in twenty minutes, thirty-eight floors below us. Ladies, put your shoes on, and everyone double-check you have what you need for tonight because we won’t be back here until around 4am.”

Everyone scattered to grab jackets and purses and shoes, so Jughead followed Betty back into the bedroom, half closing the door, and watched while she sat down on the bed to pull on a pair of heels. “You look nice,” she said with a smile. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

“Thanks,” he replied, an answering smile stretching, unbidden, across his own face. “Me too.”

They shared a moment of companionable silence, before Betty’s brow furrowed a little. “Do you think… should we tell them?”

He didn’t want to - not yet, anyways. So much of their relationship in high school had been a public spectacle, not just for their friends, but for the entire town. There was something sweet in knowing it was just the two of them, and a part of him had been hoping they could keep that up for at least the first few weeks of summer. Another part of him, louder and larger, wanted to haul her up off the bed, into his arms, and kiss her until neither of them could think straight. 

“Juggie,” she said. 

He sighed. “It’s your birthday, Betts. It’s your call.”

She smiled again, laughed a little, and stood to wrap her arms around his neck. His hands moved to her hips on instinct. “Let’s wait a little,” she said. “It’s been nice, just us.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, leaning in to press their foreheads together. “You know that means you’re going to have to stop throwing yourself at me, right. I feel like that might give it away.”

She laughed again, and finally, _finally_ kissed him. It was soft, but then she breathed, “I missed you,” and suddenly her hands were in his hair, and her tongue was in his mouth, and she was backing them towards the bed. 

But of course his perennial bad luck chose that moment to make itself known, when Veronica burst through the door, yelling, “Come _on_ , B! Let’s g-OH!”

Betty pushed him away like he’d burned her, one hand flying to her mouth to hide the fact that her lipstick had been smeared all over her face. Veronica slammed the bedroom door closed and leaned back against it, trapping them both. “I knew it!” she stage-whispered, pointing an accusatory finger at them. “I fucking knew it! You’re dating again!”

“Maybe we’re just having sex,” Betty offered, scrubbing at her mouth. 

Jughead ruined the affirmation by laughing, and saying, “Yeah, maybe we’re just having sex, Veronica. Did you ever think of that?”

“Please,” she huffed, crossing her arms. “Betty’s broken up with every single guy she’s dated so she could come home and bone you guilt-free, and you haven’t even _looked_ at another girl since high school. You’re dating, and I goddamn fucking knew it!”

“All right, all right, fine, yes,” Betty said finally. “Yes, we’re… together. But Ronnie, please, you can’t tell anyone! We’re still sort of…”

“Figuring it out again,” Jug offered when Betty seemed at a loss for words. She shot him a grateful smile. 

Veronica laughed. “Like I’m going to have to tell anyone. Fifty bucks says you give it away on your own once you’ve had a few.” At Betty’s pleading look, she sighed. “Fine. I won’t say a word. Now grab your purse and let’s go! We’ve got reservations, and a long night ahead of us.”

She pulled the door open and breezed out of the room, before poking her head back around the frame. “Jughead?”

“Yeah?”

“That lipstick shade is all wrong for you.”

 

 

Dinner turned out to be _fucking incredible_. 

He’d been prepared to sit at the end of the table, but Polly had pushed him in beside Betty, and the table was round anyways. The sisters shared a smile while the hostess passed out menus, and then Betty was gripping his hand and pulling it over to lay against her thigh. There was a moment of panic when he realized their menu was fixed, and didn’t include prices, but Cheryl waved it away by announcing that she, along with Hal and Alice, would be splitting dinner as a birthday present. 

Jughead had a lot of pride, but he’d never in his life turned down free food. 

The place claimed to serve something called New American, which turned out to be a fancy way of saying they served basically whatever they wanted. The portions were small, but plentiful, and every single one was a work of art. He nearly cried when Archie decided he couldn’t stomach the rest of his foie gras and peach relish, and passed it over. Each course came paired with a glass of wine, which he supposed was probably passing decent, but he’d never had much wine before, didn’t really care for it anyways, and only had a couple sips of each glass. Margie smiled at him from Betty’s other elbow, and they ate and drank and talked for almost two hours, until everyone was tipsy and sated. Even Jughead maintained a decent buzz, though he was careful not to let himself get carried away. It would have been easy, with Betty’s skin warm beneath his left hand and his oldest friends for company. He was feeling lazy and lulled, plied with food and drink, and still anticipating the moment when he could share the best news of his life with the best person in his life. All in all, the evening was going splendidly. 

Jughead really shouldn’t have been so surprised when things started to fall apart. 

His first inkling came when they hit the sidewalk. He’d spent an embarrassing amount of time studying the New York subway system, looking at train schedules, learning the locations of the pertinent stations, and planning walking routes. He’d done all of this while carrying his final course load for the semester, and the only reason he’d gone through so much trouble was on Betty’s behalf. 

So when he checked Google Maps on his phone, said, “Station is this way,” and got a funny look from Veronica, he could feel something hard settling in his stomach. 

“Oh, honey,” she said, flipping her hair behind her shoulder. “I thought you were kidding about the subway!”

Jughead stared at her for a moment. All she did was stare back. “Why would I joke about that?” he asked, trying to stamp out the annoyance. _Betty_ , he reminded himself. _Think of Betty_...

“I don’t know, you’re all weird and misanthropic.” She made a vague gesture at his entire person. “I’m wearing brand new Loubitins. We’re taking an Uber.”

“I’ll take the subway with you,” Betty offered sweetly, already a little drunk. The three of them seemed to be the only people paying attention to the conversation. Polly, Kevin and Cheryl were gathered around Cheryl’s phone again, while Archie and Margie argued heatedly about something. 

Jughead sighed, and looked down at Betty’s feet. The heels she’d put on back at the hotel had to be at least four inches. “Uber’s fine,” he grumbled, putting his phone away. “But I already bought a metro card so I’m refusing to chip in as a form of protest.”

Veronica had already stopped paying attention. He wanted to reach for Betty’s hand, squeeze it knowing she’d squeeze back, but she wanted to keep their relationship off the table so he shoved his hands into his pockets instead. Betty, standing close beside him, bumped their shoulders together and smiled up at him. 

“Oh my god!” Margie exclaimed loudly. “Someone tell this dodo that the Beatles are overrated!”

Archie shoved her playfully. “I admitted it! They’re just not as overrated as The Rolling Stones!”

“Blasphemy!” Jughead said before he could stop himself. “How could you, Archie?”

“I didn’t say they were bad!” Archie defended, looking appropriately guilty. “Just… overrated.”

“The Beatles?” Polly demanded shrilly. “ _Overrated_?”

“Let’s all agree they’re both awful-” Cheryl started, but whatever she was going to say was immediately drowned out by four yelling voices as Veronica finally joined the conversation, and Cheryl’s eyes widened at the onslaught. 

“This is only going to get worse as the night goes on, isn’t it?” Jughead asked Betty. Her only was laughter.

 

 

They ended up in two cars - Jughead with Betty, Polly, and Cheryl (who had refused to sit in the front seat of the Honda Accord, and wanted to be in the cab of the Cadillac, because it was more spacious), with Archie, Veronica, Kevin, and Margie in the other car. Cheryl seemed to regret this decision almost immediately when their driver, a young asian man in a pearl-snap button-up, turned his country music up as they pulled into traffic. Even more hilariously, Betty and Polly seemed to recognize a lot of the music, and once the driver realized he turned the volume up even more and the three of them spent the entire ride singing along loudly while Cheryl glared at them in the side-view mirror. 

Betty, who either didn’t realize what she was doing, or didn’t care, had her hand on his knee the entire drive. 

Their first stop wasn’t actually a bar, but some sort of themed event thrown by one of Veronica’s father’s friends. 

“I just have to make an appearance,” she said outside the building. “But there’s a free bar, and it’s the good stuff, so go nuts.”

Archie whooped, and then held his hand up for a high-five, which he eventually got from Margie. “I’m gonna get a glass of Cristal,” he said excitedly. 

“Arch, you had Cristal at Ronnie’s last New Years,” Betty pointed out gently.

“And it was amazing,” Kevin said. “We’re totally getting Cristal.”

The venue was decorated in bright swaths of white fabric, soft white lights, and pale flowers, and they were by far the most underdressed people there. They were so far underdressed that Jughead didn’t even feel bad that he was the only person in the very expansive room wearing jeans. 

The bar turned out to have Moet and Chandon instead of Cristal, but no one complained. 

After forty-five minutes of open bar, two drinks a piece, and one very insistent older woman who wouldn’t leave Archie alone until Kevin came up, grabbed his butt, and said, “Are you enjoying the party, honey?”, they were back into separate cars and on their way to Kevin’s contribution of the evening - a Country-Western themed gay bar, complete with Coyote Ugly-style dancing bartenders. 

The people were loud, the music was louder, and Jughead absolutely hated it. His one consolation was that Betty seemed to be having a great time. Her face was flushed, but she hadn’t crossed over the line from pleasantly buzzed to full-on drunk yet - she’d been drinking water obsessively, one glass for each alcoholic beverage - and she and Polly were chatting animatedly, watching the couples two-stepping on the dance floor with brilliant matching smiles. Cheryl, standing stiffly beside him with her highball glass full of Chambord margarita, looked absolutely bored. Between her misery and Betty’s happiness, the whole ordeal was bearable. 

So he waited, and watched, and sipped the same lukewarm beer for half an hour. 

“She’s having a good time,” Kevin said by his elbow, close enough to startle him. 

“Yeah,” Jughead said slowly. “They’re all having a good time…”

Kevin blinked at him. “I meant Betty.”

“I know who you meant,” Jughead shot back, a little too sharply. 

Another long moment passed, Kevin staring at Jughead, Jughead staring at the girls on the edge of the dance floor, and then Kevin gasped. “Oh my god.”

Jughead put his beer down, ran both hands over his face, and then looked at Kevin. “Oh your god what?”

Kevin’s eyes were wide when he grabbed Jughead’s shoulders, leaned in so close their foreheads were almost touching, and said, “Veronica was right.”

Before he could even process what he was doing, Jughead was dragging Kevin away from the dance floor, into the hallway by the bathrooms, which was only quieter for lack of music. It was still crowded as hell. 

“Ow?” Kevin said pointedly, rubbing his upper arm. 

“Did Veronica tell everyone already?” Jughead demanded, all but yelling. “No, don’t tell me actually. I don’t wanna know. Can you just… pretend you don’t know? For Betty? We’re still sort of figuring things out. What?”

Kevin’s eyes had gone wide as dinner plates, and there was a smile stretching slowly across his face. “Oh my god,” he said again, laughing. “Are you dating?”

“Are we- what? Yes. Veronica told you.”

“She told me, a few weeks ago, that she was pretty sure you’d been sleeping together,” Kevin offered, trying (and utterly failing) to wipe the grin off his face. “I thought Drunk Betty was just being handsy! Awwww, you guys!”

Then Kevin hugged him. Jughead didn’t return the gesture. 

“Don’t worry,” Kevin said when he pulled away. “I won’t tell anyone. Not that I’m going to have to with the way she’s been all over you…”

Before he could reply, Kevin was disappearing back into the crowd, fingers waggling goodbye. 

After a surprisingly short wait at the _incredibly_ crowded bar (where the bartender only gave him minimal stink eye for ordering two waters) Jughead resumed his position near the railing that lined the dance floor and took stock. Despite the few bumps, the evening was going surprisingly well; so well, in fact, that his teeth were on edge with anticipation of the moment when everything blew up in his face. Still, everyone else seemed to be having a great time, Betty included, and that counted for something. Archie, Kevin, and Margie were all on the dance floor attempting to muddle their way through a very simple line dance, laughing hysterically, and doing a decent job of it. 

He’d lost the rest of the girls somewhere in the still-growing crowd. Archie, already passing tipsy, made a whole bunch of gestures about getting him out in the dance floor, to which Jughead could only raise a disbelieving eyebrow, because there was _no way in hell_. He wasn’t going to two-step, and he _certainly_ wasn’t going to line dance. Ever. Still, it was fun to watch, especially when Archie haltingly, though with a wide smile, let himself be led around the dance floor for an entire song by a good-looking man with at least six inches on him, and a full, well-oiled beard. In the corner, Margie was teaching Kevin some basic steps, before shoving him in the direction of a group of young men their own age. 

Once Kevin was back out in the floor, being whirled around, Margie met his eye across the room and made her way over. She was breathless, and a little sweaty, so he offered her the second glass of water, which she accepted gratefully. 

“Something tells me you’re not a yankee,” he said, leaning in close to be heard over the music. 

Margie laughed. “Not even a bit. I grew up in Louisiana.”

“New York seems… far.”

“Exactly,” she said, nodding.

Jughead couldn’t help his answering grimace. He knew exactly how she felt, even if he hadn’t been able to shake Riverdale’s hold. He could see why Betty and Margie had bonded. 

An arm - slender, pale, and familiar - snaked its way between his body and his elbow to grab at his water. He turned, making sure Betty’s grip was secure before he let go of the glass. Veronica, Cheryl, and Polly breezed past them to the bar. Margie glanced at Betty, then gave him an exaggerated wink. “I’ll get y’all some more water,” she said, squeezing his shoulder as she passed. 

Betty, flushed and smiling, gulped the water down in record time. Jughead took the glass from her, but while he was looking for a place to put it down she stepped up against him - stumbled, really - wrapped her arms around him, and then put both hands very firmly on his ass. Ice sloshed over the glass’s rim, spilling on both their feet, but Betty didn’t seem to notice. 

“Hi,” she said, looking up at him. 

“Hi drunky,” he said, his face starting to burn as he tried to dislodge her hands without spilling more ice. 

Her smile widened, which shouldn’t have been possible. “I like your butt.”

Jughead laughed. “Thanks.” When Betty made a face, he said, “I like your butt too. Still feeling good?”

She straightened, pulling away from him so she could throw her arms in the air, and exclaimed, “Yes!” loud enough that the people around them stared. She didn’t seem to notice, and let out a delighted little, “Oh!” when Margie showed up and handed her another glass of water. 

“I’ll give you three guesses what those girls were doing in the ladies room,” Margie said to Jughead, “and the first two don’t count.”

Snippets of an earlier conversation involving illicit drugs flew to the forefront of his mind, and he gave Betty a searching look. He had a hard time believing she’d let Veronica, much less Polly, do coke in the bathroom of a gay cowboy bar (and there was no question in his mind about whether she’d participated - because she hadn’t), but then again it was just possible that she was drunk enough to not really notice or care. 

But then Betty leaned in to both of them and stage-whispered, “Drugs,” before her momentum carried her into Jughead again. He put an arm around her waist while she giggled. 

“Bingo!” Margie replied, poking the tip of Betty’s nose with her forefinger. They both laughed, Jug glowered, and then Veronica appeared beside him and said, “Don’t make that face. _We_ didn’t do any coke.”

“Well thank god for that,” Jughead mumbled at the same time Veronica continued, “I smoked a little weed though.”

“Oh my god,” he groaned, running a hand over his face. “That might be our cue to move on.”

“What? No!” Betty whined, pulling away from him again. “Nobody’s asked me to dance.”

“Oh honey, this is a gay bar,” Ronnie offered helpfully.

Betty grumbled something under her breath, glaring off at the dance floor, and Veronica gave him a nudge. “I’m not dancing,” he said firmly.

“Not you!” Betty said, waving a hand in his face. “You can’t two-step. Can you two-step?”

Trying to swat her hand away, Jughead replied, “Not last I checked.”

Margie reached out to grab Betty’s hand, said, “Come on, birthday girl,” and pulled her out onto the dance floor. 

“I like that girl,” Veronica said, sipping her pink drink . Betty was laughing, doing a decent job of following as Margie led her through a couple of simple spins, guiding her through the crowd of dancers. “I can see why Betty keeps her around.”

A new song started, and Margie convinced Betty to stay on the floor and try the line dance. Together, with enough gesturing and yelling, they managed to coax Veronica out too, and after a moment Polly pushed her drink into his hand, said, “Watch this for me?” and joined them. Even Cheryl, standing stiffly at his side - though much less stiffly than earlier in the evening - looked interested. A few minutes later, when the music changed again, Margie jogged up, grabbed Cheryl’s hand, and dragged her into the whirling crowd. Jughead almost dropped her drink when she tried to shove it into his already-full hands.

Thirty minutes later they were all sweaty and laughing and moving on to the next bar. While they were standing outside waiting for their ride, one of the young men Kevin had been dancing with rushed out of the club, kissed him very firmly on the mouth, and tucked a napkin into the pocket of his slacks. “Call me?”

“Boo, no hook-ups!” Polly yelled, before almost face-planting into the side of the Hyundai Tuscon that had pulled up - and, as they discovered when the driver started shouting, wasn’t their Uber. 

“Yeah, no hook-ups!” Veronica shouted while Jughead pulled Polly away from the Tuscon. When their car finally arrived, he ushered into the back seat in the hopes that the irate driver wouldn’t notice the glare she was directing at him. Betty crawled in beside her with a surprising amount of grace, given all she’d had to drink and the heels on her feet. Archie made a move for the front seat, but Margie pushed him gently toward the second car, where the others were piling in. 

“Hey,” she said, reaching out to tug on Jughead’s sleeve. “What do you think my chances are with your redheaded friend?”

“Pretty good,” Jughead replied before he could think about it too much. It felt unfair to both of them to say that Archie was easy, and while Margie was plenty pretty, she wasn’t exactly his type. “Unless Veronica gets their first. They sort of… have some history.”

“Damn,” Margie muttered. “I thought I was picking up on something there.” She smiled. “Oh well! Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”

“I’d be all right with not talking about this,” Jughead said. Margie laughed, and climbed into the front seat. 

 

 

“Wow,” Jughead deadpanned quietly. “Karaoke. I wonder which of our friends picked this bar.”

“Margie did,” Betty replied over her shoulder. “She comes here a lot.”

Archie, naturally, was stoked, and went to sign up before even bothering to order a drink. In fact, most of their party did, and he was left standing at the bar with Cheryl and the seven tequila shots she’d ordered. 

“Well go on, tall-dark-and-creepy,” she said, holding three of the glasses between both her hands, “grab the other drinks and then throw those bony elbows at the crowd and find me a table.”

It was a little after 1:30 in the morning, on the first Friday night of summer break, and the place was absolutely packed. Jughead stood awkwardly on the edge of the crowd for a long moment before Cheryl pushed past him with an annoyed huff. Eight drinks in, in stacked stilettos, higher than a kite, and the tequila in the glasses barely sloshed. It was such a small thing, but it was Cheryl to the letter, and even though they hadn’t been classmates in years, memories of going through middle school with Cheryl two years ahead of him (cruel, ceaseless, bordering on sociopathic) still made his stomach turn. 

But when he met her eyes - she’d intimidated a table off a group of 20-somethings - she waved her hand at him in gesture that was both inpatient and inviting, and the dark, sucking feeling in his chest eased a little. 

“Wanna take bets on the first duet?” she asked when he set the other shot glasses down and took a seat one chair over from her.

It didn’t take much thinking for him to come up with an answer. “Archie and Veronica.”

Cheryl scoffed, but nodded. “Too easy. Second duet then.”

He had to think about it a little, but once he did it seemed obvious. “Archie and Margie.”

“She’s a fellow red-head, you know,” Cheryl offered. “She only dyes her hair for game season”

Jughead _hmm_ ed in response. “I didn’t realize softball warranted so much school spirit.”

“It does when you’re on full scholarship,” Margie cut in, dropping into the empty seat between them and grabbing one of the tequila shots. “What are we toasting?”

“Me!” Betty exclaimed, reaching over Jughead to pick up a glass. She leaned down, wrapping an arm around him, and he had to grab the shot glass from her to keep her from spilling it all over him. They were both laughing when he pried her arm off and tried to guide her into the vacant seat beside him. Veronica, either too drunk to notice the move, or - more likely - not caring, stole the chair at the last possible second so that Betty wound up sitting on her. 

“Uh-uh sweetheart, wrong lap,” Veronica said, pushing her back toward Jughead with a smile that was entirely too innocent.

Betty settled in before he could protest, one arm around his shoulders while her free hand reached for the confiscated drink. “I can’t help but notice we’re not toasting me,” she said while he settled his arms around her waist. 

“Drunk Betty is kind of belligerent,” he said.

“Isn’t it great?” Polly said, laughing while Betty protested loudly.

“To Lizzie!” Margie cut in, raising her glass. Everyone followed suit, and Archie met his eyes across the table, nodding his head very pointedly at Betty, who was making a face as she bit into her lime wedge. If it had been anyone else Jughead would have probably just rolled his eyes and let the moment go.

But it was Archie, so he smiled a little. Archie smiled back, and raised his eyebrows in silent question. Jughead could feel the smile stretching even wider across his face as he gave a small nod. 

“Nice!” Archie exclaimed to no one in particular, before looking around at the rest of the group. “Who’s Lizzie?”

 

 

Later, Jughead wouldn’t be proud of how long it had taken him to realize they were missing a person. 

(In his defense, the seventh shot - which would have gone to Kevin - wasn’t on the table by itself for more than a few minutes. On top of the shots, Cheryl had also ordered a round of drinks, and had eventually taken the extra shot herself. Then Margie had done an astounding karaoke rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart, and Archie and Veronica had followed it up with Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, and between the singing, the one beer he’d allowed himself, and Betty’s warm weight in his lap - well, he didn’t really think anyone would blame him.)

“Is Kevin okay?” he asked Veronica. 

“He’s probably in the bathroom,” Betty said, climbing off of him. She kissed his forehead, then pulled Polly out of her chair and up toward the stage. He wanted to press the matter, but everyone else - including Cheryl - was clapping and hollering as the music started. 

Drunk Betty, as it turned out, was a decent singer. Polly wasn’t bad either. 

Together, the Cooper sisters belted their way through Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, complete with wild, drunken gesturing - some of it at the crowd, but most of it at each other - and lots of extended vowels where the lyrics didn’t call for them. By the end of it, he was clapping and hollering along with the rest of the crowd, his eyes fixed firmly on Betty’s flushed, smiling face. Looking at her now, he had a hard time reconciling the young woman on stage with the same shy, reserved girl he’d dated in high school; she’d been plenty confident, even then, but it had always been a confidence born of conviction, and planning - literally _so much_ planning. He would never have been able to imagine her doing something as spontaneous , and _public_ , as karaoke - but there she was, eyes bright, singing with her sister like they were the only people in the room. 

Confidence looked really, _really_ good on Elizabeth Cooper. 

So good, in fact, that when she climbed off stage, grabbed his hand, and pulled him out of his chair and back into the crowd, he just assumed she wanted another drink. They were already halfway to the bathrooms (all unisex, and single stall) by the time he noticed they were moving away from the bar, and Betty was pushing one of the doors open, drawing him in behind her, when he realized her intentions. 

He tried to stop her - he would swear it to anyone who asked - but before he could protest she pushed him against the door and nosed his shirt collar aside, mouthing at his neck as she groped blindly behind him for the lock. His hands went to her shoulders to push her away, but somehow wound up cupping her face instead, pulling her up to kiss her. Her mouth opened eagerly under his, and it was disturbingly easy to tune out the music and the bar chatter when her teeth grazed his bottom lip. She hitched one leg up around his hips, and he caught the back of her knee on instinct, afraid she might tip over in the other direction. She still wobbled, and laughed a little when their teeth bumped, but the movement only carried her closer, her hips canting against his, looking for friction. 

His mind went blissfully, ecstatically blank when she wound her fingers with his where they were still curled in her hair and dragged his hand down her body and then up underneath her skirt, between her parted legs. She made the most amazing little noises when he touched her, and he did his best to swallow every single one of them, even though there was little to no chance of anyone hearing them over whoever was serenading the bar with Cher’s Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves. She clung to his shoulders, and kissed him desperately until her breath caught in her throat. 

She had his belt buckle undone before he even realized where her hands were, and she was working on the button of his jeans by the time he could gather enough willpower to do anything about it. 

“Betts,” he said gently, attempting to push her hands away. “Hey. Slow down.”

“We can’t exactly take our time here,” she said with a smile, still trying to reach for his waistband. She gave a delighted gasp when he caught both her wrists gently in one hand, then whined a little when he pulled them up against his chest and wrapped his other arm tightly around her to trap her hands between them. He couldn’t help the little laugh that escaped him when the corners of her mouth turned down in a pout.

“Look, Cooper,” he said softly, leaning down to look her in the eye. “I don’t know what kind of girl you think I am, but this isn’t going to happen in a bar bathroom while one of us is drunk.”

Looking up at him through her eyelashes, Betty said, “‘m not that drunk.”

He laughed again, and placed a chaste kiss on her mouth. “We have all weekend,” he said, voice gentle. “Go have fun with our dumb, drunk friends. I’ll still be here when you wake up tomorrow.” 

She ‘hmmf’ed, and then wriggled free, stepping away from him and turning to check her reflection in the mirror. Her lipstick had become impossibly smudged again. 

“Wow, Veronica was right,” Jughead said when he caught a glimpse of himself over her shoulder. “This really isn't my color.”

“Well,” Betty said sharply when she’d finished dabbing at her mouth with a wet paper towel. “It's good you won't have to wear it again tonight.”

She tried to throw the paper towel at his face, but missed horrendously. 

“I thought you weren't that drunk,” he teased, laughing as she started to scowl. “I'm three feet in front of you!”

What followed was a weird, protracted moment of silence where Jughead wondered if he’d hit some kind of nerve: Betty’s face went perfectly, passively blank, and her hands fisted in the hem of her skirt, but it passed so quickly he almost thought he’d imagined it. In the next instant she was smiling, stepping up to him to wrap her arms around his neck and hug him close. “Sorry,” she said softly. “I just really missed you.”

He returned the embrace, letting his arms settle around her waist while he pressed his forehead to hers. “I missed you too.”

Before he could move - or breathe, or think - she was palming him through his jeans, her hand warm even through the thick layer of fabric. “Yeah,” she said, squeezing gently. “I know you did.”

And then she was gone, tossing her bright blonde hair as she breezed out of the bathroom, leaving him there with his heart in his throat and her lipstick all over his face.  
He didn’t think anyone would begrudge him a cigarette. 

 

 

Veronica found him outside the bar, halfway through the first smoke he’d had in three weeks. 

“Oh Juggie,” she said, mouth twisting into a disappointed frown. “I thought you were quitting.” 

He sighed, took another drag, and said. “I _was_ quitting.” Then, when Veronica’s eyebrows climbed up into her hairline, “I _am_ quitting. I figured one cigarette was preferable to finishing myself off in the bathroom of a hipster karaoke bar. Can you bla - really?”

“This isn’t a cigarette,” Ronnie protested at the disbelieving look he gave her when she lit up. She took a long, deep hit off the joint, held it, and then said on the exhale, “You did the right thing, you really did, and I’m just drunk enough that I need to tell you that.”

They blinked at each other a few times before Jughead said, “Okay.”

Veronica nodded. “Okay.” She took another hit. “I’m just telling you so it doesn’t totally destroy you when I throw you under the bus in the next twenty minutes.”

He clutched his left hand to his chest (the cigarette was in his right), and let out a quiet, dramatic gasp. “Veronica.” She made another face at him, and he smiled. “It is so sweet that you think you could totally destroy me.”

Her smile was small and genuine, but there was something secretive about it. “You keep up the pretense all you want, Jones, but you and I both know we’re _actually_ friends. Even if you’d die before you said it out loud to anyone.” He felt his own smile falter, and then Veronica was laughing. “You’re adorable,” she said, before gesturing at him with the joint. “You wanna trade?”

He really, _really_ did. 

“I’m good.” He waved away the offer and stubbed out his cigarette. “I wouldn’t say no to a couple plates of nachos for the table, though.”

She stowed the rest of the joint back in its (tiny, fancy, anti-odor) bag, and tilted her head at him. “If the nachos are for the table, what are _you_ gonna eat?”

“They have a 20-wing basket that Yelp raved about.”

Veronica rolled her eyes, and grabbed his elbow to pull him back into the bar. “Of course you’re looking up food reviews while the rest of us are getting drunk and socializing like normal human beings. Do you ever think about how there’s a decent chance that your incredible metabolism could turn on you when you’re thirty, but years of ingrained eating habits will keep you from doing anything about it until you’ve gained two-hundred pounds and had your third heart attack?”

“Jesus, Veronica,” he muttered, too low for her to hear - which was probably just as well, since she didn’t seem to be listening. They’d barely made it to the table before Betty marched past them, announced, “We’re taking shots, V!” and snagged Veronica’s free hand to pull her back toward the bar. Archie climbed out of his chair, patted Jughead roughly on the shoulder as he passed, and then followed the girls.

“You fucked up,” Cheryl said in a song-song voice as he sat down. He had the weird feeling that she’d somehow managed to do more coke in the ten minutes he’d been gone.

“Pretty sure I didn’t,” he said to the menu. _Classic buffalo or lemon pepper? Or Both?.._

Margie snorted. “Birthday girl thinks you did, so…”

Jughead gave both of them a pointed look of disbelief. “Are you honestly telling me you would have gone through with… whatever that was?”

“Duh,” Margie said, right on top of Cheryl’s, “Absolutely.”

“I have two five year-olds,” Polly offered from across the table. 

“Are you arguing for or against your drunk little sister having sex with a strange boy in the bathroom of a karaoke bar?” Margie asked, one elbow on the table, chin propped in her hand.

Polly gave it some thought. “I’m not sure.”

“Strange boy?” Jughead said.

Cheryl snorted. “Please. You go to community college in Greendale, and you’re probably _still_ the weirdest person you know.”

“I’ll have you know I missed a campus-wide paintball tournament to be at this party,” he said, brows knitting together as he frowned.

Between a lull in karaoke performers, and the silence that descended over his own table, Jughead was beginning to feel like the whole conversation was getting needleslly personal.

“Again,” Margie said with a frown. “Are you arguing for or against you being the weirdest person at this community college?”

“I don’t even know anymore,” Jughead said, voice muffled by both hands where they pressed over his face. 

“Hey Liz!” Margie called, when Betty, Veronica, and Archie returned to the table. “Can I come visit you this summer?” Betty nodded enthusiastically over her Malibu and pineapple, and Margie pumped a fist in the air. “I have to see Riverdale,” she said, leaning over so she was shoulder to shoulder with Jughead. “There’s something in the water, right? Because y’all are all strange as - fuck!”

Her elbow made contact with someone’s discarded, half-full water glass, ice tinkled as it spilled across the table, and all the remaining water flowed immediately into Jughead’s lap.

“Goddamnit,” he said quietly, not even bothering to move. 

 

 

Margie apologized by flagging down a waiter and bribing him with twenty bucks to rush their food order. She offered to buy him a beer too, but he talked her down to a soda instead. Veronica and Archie both took another turn at karaoke, their food arrived, and Betty stole one of his wings with a look that dared him to protest. Margie attempted to get Cheryl on stage for a stirring, all-ladies rendition of Paradise by the Dashboard Light, failed miserably, and ended up singing Meatloaf’s part by herself - she did a surprisingly good job - for almost an entire verse before Archie took pity on her and climbed onto the stage to belt out Ellen Foley’s lines. The entire bar went nuts when Archie pleaded with Margie to take him away and make him her wife. 

He would wake up the next morning (afternoon, really) realizing that Cheryl had completely thrown their bet, but there was something awful pressing at the back of his mind that night, distracting him, and he was sixteen wings into the twenty-wing basket when he realized what it was. 

“Kevin,” he said, loud enough that the entire table looked at him. Six pairs of blank, slightly glassy eyes stared back at him uncomprehendingly until he said, “Where is Kevin?”

“He’s fine,” Veronica said as she dug a nacho out of one of the platters.

Frustrated, Jughead countered, “I didn’t ask if he was fine. I asked where he was.”

“He’s… here,” Betty said uncertainly, craning her head to look around the bar. “Somewhere. Right?”

“Probably,” Ronnie said unhelpfully. 

Jughead gave his unfinished wing basket a helpless look of longing, then wiped his hands and pushed away from the table. “I’ll be back. Someone text me if Kevin shows up?”

“Of course,” Betty said earnestly, eyes wide and all trace of pouting gone. Veronica nodded emphatically, while Polly and Margie both made noises of agreement. Cheryl rolled her eyes, but took her phone out and put it on the table. 

“Relax, Jug,” Archie said. “He’s fine. I just saw him. He’s probably off in a dark corner making small talk.”

Taking out his phone, Jughead shot off a quick text to their AWOL friend ( _where are you?_ ) and then took a turn around the bar. The place turned out to be a lot bigger than he’d expected, with several side rooms, and after twenty minutes of searching every dark corner, satellite bar, the front _and_ back patios, and the restrooms, Kevin was still nowhere to be found - he hadn’t bothered to text either. He did a second, cursory sweep, quicker than the first, with the same results. It was a little before three in the morning. 

He stopped to grab another water before he went back to the table. Betty was halfway through something pink and fruity when he plucked it out of her hands and pushed the water at her. She glared at him, but drained the glass in a few long gulps and then stuck her hand out for her drink.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Archie ate your wings,” Veronica said. “There’s still nachos, though.”

Jughead sighed. “I was talking about Kevin. Obviously I was talking about Kevin. And Archie - seriously?”

“I didn’t want them to get cold,” Archie said defensively. 

“Christ,” Jughead mumbled, rubbing a hand over his eyes. There was an ache forming behind them. “I’m gonna try calling him. Outside.” Conveniently, that was also the only place you could smoke, but he didn’t bother saying that part out loud. 

He was altogether unsurprised when Kevin failed to pick up, but it was soothing to be out of the bar. The street was still noisy with cars and drunks, but almost half the people out front were smoking, so it was easy to bum another cigarette, and after a few minutes he could feel something unwinding in his chest, away from the press of people. Large crowds always made his skin prickle with a strange sort of tension, like he didn’t fit into his own body and at any moment the seams might burst but all that would spill out was sand. 

Or at least that was always how he’d visualized it to himself. When the night was over, he was going to have a long talk with Veronica about how she wasn’t allowed to shame him into coming to any social events for at least six months. 

He was stubbing the cigarette out when Ronnie burst out of the bar and hurried toward him, one hand searching frantically through her purse. “You can thank me later,” she said right before she spritzed him in the face with something that smelled like flowers and tasted like rubbing alcohol. While he was coughing around the chemical taste in his mouth, the rest of their party - sans Kevin, of course - tripped out the front door.

“What fresh hell have you visited on me?” Jughead demanded, voice low, before Betty tripped into him, her arms circling his waist for support. 

Veronica had stowed the body spray, and was now focused on the screen of her phone. “Calm down, Dante. I’m getting an Uber.”

Betty wrinkled her nose and pulled away from him. “You smell gross.”

Veronica dodged his attempt to grab her phone. “There are a lot of smokers out here,” she said to Betty, pointedly _not_ making eye contact with him. 

A frustrated noise worked itself out of his throat. “We're not leaving until we find Kevin.”

“Well you’re gonna be waiting awhile, then.” Veronica shoved her phone in his face, nearly hitting him in the nose. “He’s already on his way t- hey!”

Finally able to snatch the phone away from her, Jughead stepped out of reach and scrolled through the texts. Ronnie made a valiant attempt to retrieve it, but between the alcohol, the weed, the designer pumps, and the eleven inches he had on her in height, she might as well have been reaching for the sky. Still, she did her best, which mostly meant pulling at his clothes and attempting to step on his feet. 

It didn’t last long. She only had one other text from Kevin that night, and as soon as he’d read it he was dropping the phone back into her hands and pacing away, one hand clamped over his mouth, so suddenly, blindingly angry that he couldn’t even think. 

The text had read _where do you go to park in NYC? ;) meet you l8r!_ She’d had it in her phone since just before they'd gotten to the bar, and she hadn't said a _goddamn_ thing. He'd wasted thirty minutes actively looking for Kevin, and almost an entire hour anxiously worrying about what would happen to him and Betty if he lost her other BFF. He'd had to forfeit chicken wings. 

(And, yes, he was a little worried for Kevin's safety, but Kevin was a grown man and hadn't had nearly as much to drink as anyone else in their group. The chances he was laying in an alley, bleeding out from a mugging-gone-wrong were slim to none. 

Still.)

“See?” Ronnie quipped. “Nothing to worry abo-”

“What,” Jughead interrupted, completely unaware that he was yelling, “the _actual_ fuck, Veronica!”

“Well there's no need to swear,” Polly said with a frown. She ruined it by catching the heel of her shoe in crack in the sidewalk. From somewhere down the block, he heard Archie exclaim, “Holy crap you guys! A dog!” but he was too busy trying to process the face Veronica was making - inconvenienced, outraged, and annoyed - to pay much attention. Polly stepped out of the shoe that was stuck in the concrete, pried it free, and then took her other shoe off as well. 

“Nothing?” Jughead demanded when Veronica didn’t respond. “You have nothing?”

She made another face. “Am I supposed to have something?”

“I asked you where Kevin was!”

“No,” Ronnie said, shaking her head (and her finger) at him. “No you didn’t. You asked if he was okay.”

“Pretty sure I didn’t, but even if I had I feel like you still should have shared the text,” he shot back. Something moved in his peripherals, and he glanced over to see Betty and Polly, hands clasped together like children, standing dangerously close to the curb and eyeing the passing traffic. “Don’t even think about it!” he said when Polly glanced over her shoulder at him. 

“We wanna get in that fountain,” Polly said, pointing across the street with her free hand, at the same time Betty supplied, “We wanna look at that fountain.”

“Uh-uh. No.” Jughead shook his head. “No one is crossing this busy street.”

Loudly, Veronica added, “And no one gets to have any fun either!”

“I just watched you down three rounds of shots and smoke a joint in public!” he yelled, whirling back to face her. “You’ve had plenty of fucking fun!”

“So I can have fun, but Kevin can’t?!”

He genuinely wanted to scream.

“Margie’s trying to boost Archie over that fence,” Cheryl said in a bored tone. 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Jughead mumbled. “Hey!”

Halfway down the block, two heads swivelled toward him wearing identical faces of guilt. Margie was down on one knee, hands braced against the wrought-iron fence while an old golden retriever wagged its tail and licked her fingers. Archie was standing on Margie’s knee, trying to get one leg over the fence without impaling himself somewhere delicate and only sort of succeeding. The dog barked happily when Jughead approached. 

“Okay, no, we’re not doing this,” he said, pulling Archie down. “You’re not fifteen anymore. You’re gonna get arrested.”

“Man,” Margie huffed as she climbed to her feet. “Ronnie was right. You don’t want anyone to have any fun.” She gave the dog another pat through the fence and stalked back toward Cheryl and Veronica. A car horn blared. Betty and Polly were across the street.

“Is no one even going to _try_ and make this easy for me?” Jughead demanded to no one in particular. 

Veronica frowned at him. “What exactly did you think was going to happen when you were the only sober person in a group full of drunk people?”

“I was seven the first time my dad took me into a biker bar,” he said through gritted teeth. “And none of those fuckers were half as much trouble as you bunch of assholes.”

“Hey!” Veronica scowled. “You can call us assholes all you want but you shouldn’t talk about your girlfriend like that! Also your girlfriend is in that fountain.”

“Called it. Totally dating,” Margie deadpanned, holding her hand out to Cheryl, who rolled her eyes, sighed and fished $20 out of her purse. 

“Thanks, Veronica!” he snapped, voice rising again. “Tell the whole goddamn city while you’re at it!”

“I _know_ you’re not blaming this on me!” For someone so small, Veronica was unnaturally good at looking down her nose. “She’s been all over you the entire night. The whole bar knows you’re dating!”

She didn’t seem to understand that she’d missed the point by a mile, which was somehow more infuriating than having everyone know something they’d wanted to keep to themselves. Betty had wanted more time. Betty had asked her to keep it quiet. _Betty_ was going to be hurt when she was sober enough to realize what Veronica had done - and it was such a stupid, chauvinistic cliche, but he _really_ hated it when Betty got hurt. 

Before he could even realize what he was doing, Jughead turned to Archie and said, “Veronica and Cheryl slept together after your Christmas party.”

Cheryl made a noise that might have been a choked off scream as anger drained her face of all color, and Ronnie yelled, “What the fuck, Jughead?”

He watched Archie’s face fall, and immediately wished he could take the words back. Cheryl took a menacing step toward him, but Margie halted her with a hand on her shoulder. Veronica’s jaw clenched. Across the street, Betty shrieked with laughter as Polly pushed her down into the water.

“Dude,” Archie said, the disappointment evident on his face. “Seriously?”

Marching to the curb, Veronica cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Betty! You’re boyfriend smokes!” 

Veronica turned to Margie and Cheryl, voice dripping with false sweetness. “Oh, Margie. Since we’re sharing things tonight, and you’re the only one here who doesn’t know - Jughead’s real name is Forsythe.”

Archie made a high-pitched, offended noise that would have been hilarious in any other circumstance, but Jughead was too busy trying to decide whether he wanted to tell Veronica to get fucked, or go to hell. 

But of course, his bad luck had other ideas. 

A car horn blared across the street as Betty stepped out into the traffic, her shoes in one hand, dripping wet. Her face looked like a thundercloud, and while she was watching for the cars she was also being much too cavalier about getting in front of them. He had a sudden, horrible vision of her being struck by one of the passing vehicles, having to watch her bleed out on the concrete in an unfamiliar, unfeeling city. Words came tumbling out of his mouth - _don’t move, stay there, stop_ \- and before he knew what he was doing, he’d stepped into the street.

Several things happened in slow motion. A bright light caught his eye, careening toward him much too quickly. Something grabbed the back of his shirt, choking him momentarily, and then he was falling backward. There was a dull, crunching sound that he felt more than heard, and then his vision tunneled. Someone screamed.

When he came back to himself, it was because Betty was sobbing wildly over him, tears dripping off her chin to land on his face. He was laying on the ground, circled by someone’s arms and legs, head propped against a chest that was firm and warm and smelled vaguely like Axe body spray but mostly like sweat. Veronica was in the street, yelling and cursing in a jumbled mix of languages (only one of which was English) while she slapped her hand against the driver’s side window. The word “lawsuit” was being thrown around a lot. 

His eyes focused a little when Archie’s face joined Betty’s in his field of vision. He tried to ask, “What happened?” but the words came out all slurred. When he attempted to get up, one hand pushing against Archie’s knee, one of his legs didn’t want to cooperate, and when he tried to force it little lights flared behind his eyes.

“Oh my god,” Betty breathed, her hands on his face. “Oh my god you’re okay. You’re okay. Don’t try to move.”

Parked right in front of them, hazard lights blinking as it sat stopped in traffic, was the silver Lexus that would probably have killed him if Archie hadn’t grabbed the back of his shirt. It had still managed to roll over his left foot. 

“Oh,” he said blearily when he realized who was standing behind the open passenger door. “Hey Kevin.”

 

 

They ended up having to cut his shoe off his foot. He was sort of pissed at first, because not only was it one half of the nicest pair of shoes he owned, it was also the only pair he’d bothered to bring. The drugs had kicked in by the time the nurse had told him he wouldn’t be wearing a shoe on that foot for a long time anyways, and he’d been too exhausted and high to be anything but understanding about it. 

The driver that had hit him - a very good-looking man about ten years older than him - had ended up driving him to the ER, with Betty, Archie, and Kevin along for the ride, while everyone else had followed in an Uber. In the end, everyone but Betty and Archie had gone back to the hotel to crash. Betty and Archie had also crashed, but they’d each done it in a chair pulled up to the side of his hospital bed, Archie with his head pillowed in his own arms where they were folded on the bed, and Betty with her forehead pressed against the thigh of his uninjured leg. 

It was almost eleven in the morning by the time they’d climbed out of a cab in front of the hotel, armed with paperwork, a prescription for pain pills, a boot, two crutches, and the number of the orthopedic surgeon they’d referred his case to. 

Archie, exhausted and still a little drunk, had announced that he was going to fill the prescription and started down the block before anyone could stop him. Betty helped him up to their suite, her hand hovering near the small of his back all through the lobby and the elevator ride, until he’d settled down in one of the bedrooms. 

“I’m going to get you some water,” she said while she unbuttoned his shirt. He’d been trying to do it himself, but between the hydrocodone and the lack of sleep he was feeling a little fuzzy. “And some food. Room service is on Ronnie, so we can go a little nuts. You’ve gotta be hungry.”

“Always,” he said, laying back against the pillows after Betty peeled him out of his undershirt. Laughing, she leaned in to kiss him, one hand cradling his jaw, her mouth soft and sweet against his own. He smiled up at her when she pulled away, leaning into her touch, and said, “I never gave you your present.”

Fighting down a smile, she said, “You didn’t have to get me anything.”

“I didn't _have_ to do anything,” Jughead shot back. His tone softened at the face of fake outrage that Betty made, and he said, “I _wanted_ to. Go grab my messenger bag?”

She kissed him again, her smile wide and bright, then all but leapt from the bed. She came back into the room carrying both his bags, then put the messenger bag down beside him on the bed, closed her eyes, and held both her hands out. 

“I’m not going to sing,” he said gently, fingers fumbling at the bag’s clasps. 

Eyes still shut tight, Betty said, “That’s okay.”

He fished the book out of the front pocket, and checked to make sure letter was still tucked securely between the pages. He was tired and hungry, drugged and deeply in love - so he chalked up all his feelings of inadequacy to those mitigating circumstances, and took the terrifying plunge. “Happy birthday,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her shoulder before placing the book in her upturned palms. 

“Oh,” she breathed before she’d even opened her eyes, fingertips traveling over the textured cover. Blinking back tears, she hugged it close to her chest and smiled tremulously at him, then plucked the piece of printer paper out. “First edition,” she said, laying the book beside her on the bed so she could unfold the letter. “And you even wrote something.”

“Sort of,” he mumbled, watching her face even as he tried to sink into the pillows. 

It was a testament to how tired she was, that it took her almost half a minute to read the letter. He watched her eyes widen, watched her mouth move around the words before she looked up at him, a tentative smile poised and ready to take over her mouth, before she reread the letter again. When she’d finished, she folded it back up and tucked it into the book.

“Juggie,” she said finally, unable to keep the smile from breaking across her face. “Is that - are you accepting?”

He nodded, knowing his face was already splitting into a similar grin, and groped around on top of the bedspread until he could hold one of her hands in his own. The room was hot around him. “It’s a big leap,” he said, his voice coming from somewhere far away. “But I know your lease is about to be up, and you were looking into a one-bedroom anyway, so I thought…”

She scooted closer to him and grabbed his other hand. “Say it,” she demanded softly. “Ask me.”

Jughead couldn’t keep himself from laughing, even as his heart tried to pound its way out of his chest. With every last bit of strength he could muster, he sat up, pulled Betty’s hands close to his chest, and said, “Elizabeth Cooper, will you live in sin with me, in the greatest city in the world?”

“So that’s a yes,” he said, when she’d finished crying and kissing him. All Betty could do was laugh, nodding against his collarbone. She was careful to keep clear of his injury as she wound her arms around his shoulders. Her curls had fallen but her hair was soft between his fingers, her mouth even softer as she leaned in to kiss him again, short and sweet, before pulling away from him and sitting up.

“Don’t make that face,” she said, laughing. “You need to eat. I know they have chicken and waffles, and an eggs benedict with crab cakes. I’m going to get a mimosa, honestly, because I’m pretty sure I’m transitioning into hungover. Ooh, and maybe an egg white frittata.”

“Egg white frittata?” He raised an eyebrow. “Get the chicken and waffles. It’s your birthday.” Betty smiled, nodding, and it was only then that he realized how quiet the suite was. “Shit,” he said, remembering Veronica’s itinerary. “You should go to hangover brunch, Betts.”

Betty gave him a withering look before picking up the information booklet off the bedside table and flipping to the room service menu. “So not the crab cake eggs benedict or the continental breakfast.”

“Seriously,” he said, laying back against the pillows again. “I’m just going to eat and take a pain pill and go to bed. I already ruined your night out. I don’t need to ruin your entire weekend.”

“Juggie,” she sighed, frowning. “Why do you think you ruined my night out?”

“I mean, I was sort of a wet blanket. I got mad at Veronica and yelled at her.” He smiled up at her, or at least he hoped he did - he was honestly so out of it that it was hard to tell what his face was doing. “Oh, and also I got hit by a car and you had to spend the night in the ER.”

“I didn’t have to do anything,” Betty said loftily, echoing his earlier words. “I _wanted_ to be there. I _want_ to be here. With you.” She smiled morosely, and cupped his chin in one hand. “Do you honestly think I’d have fun, knowing you were here alone?”

“It just seems like a shitty way to spend a birthday,” he mumbled, laying one hand over her own. 

“I get to be with you,” she said. “It’s a good way to spend a birthday. Now, do you want me to read you the menu?”

Jughead laughed. “The crab cake thing sounds good.”


	2. Epilogue: Take Up for Your Buddies

With the exception of brunch, most of Saturday was spent in recovery. Margie convinced Kevin and Archie to go on a walk with her through Central Park, but for the most part everyone just laid around in pajamas, nursing mimosas and bloody marys, and watching movies. Jughead slept until a little after 4:00pm, and only got up because his stomach was rumbling and his medication was wearing off. Betty, who’d been curled up beside him, woke up when he tried to get out of the bed on his own. She’d told him to lay back down, that she’d get him some more water and a snack, and find out what was happening for dinner. There’d been some protesting on his part, but she’d just ignored it. 

Eventually they’d ordered pizza. 

He was sitting up in bed, his broken foot propped on a pile of pillows, almost finished with his fourth piece of pizza, when Veronica wandered into the bedroom and shut the door quietly behind her. Betty, lounging beside him, looked up over the copy of _The Outsiders_ he’d given her earlier that morning. “Hey V,” she said. “What’s up?”

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Veronica asked, one corner of her mouth turned down in the beginning of a frown. “Both of you?”

Betty closed her book and sat up. “What’s wrong?”

Wringing her hands together, Veronica said, “I think I might owe you an apology. Especially you, Jug.”

His response to this was to raise an eyebrow and take another bite of pizza. Truthfully, he was too doped, and sleepy from eating, to care much about anything that had happened last night beyond no one dying, but one of the things he’d always admired about Veronica was that she owned her mistakes like no one else he’d ever met. If she felt like she needed to apologize, he wasn’t about to stop her. 

Betty looked at him, then at Veronica, and when no one said anything Veronica sat down at the foot of the bed. “Last night, I might have said some things - yelled some things - that I probably shouldn’t have. I just - I was drunk, and _really_ high, and I should know better than to mix substances because it pretty much always gets me in trouble. I’m _really_ sorry.”

Betty glanced at both of them again, a questioning frown on her face. Jughead shrugged, said, “Okay,” and took another bite of pizza. 

“Okay?” Veronica’s perfectly manicured eyebrows tried to climb into her hairline. “Okay as in-”

“Okay as in it’s okay,” Jughead cut her off, talking around the food in his mouth. When Ronnie’s eyebrows failed to return to their resting place, he said, “Unless it’s not okay.”

She nodded slowly. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just… forgive me if I’m skeptical that _you_ of all people are accepting the excuse ‘I was a drunk asshole’ as an apology.”

Jughead smiled. “You can thank the Lexus that ran me over and the subsequent _really_ good drugs for my improved mood.”

“It’s true,” Betty said, reaching over to push his hair back out of his eyes with a fond smile. “We ended up watching the last half of Sex and the City 2 because he couldn’t stop laughing at it.”

Veronica snorted. “That movie’s not even funny. Or good.”

“The plot starts fifteen minutes from the end,” Jughead laughed.

Ronnie’s eyes widened, and she smiled. “Why haven’t we been doing _this_ all afternoon?” she asked. “I think I saw Paul Blart: Mall Cop on demand. Let’s watch Paul Blart!”

“Noooo,” Betty whined. “I already had to put my foot down about Twilight!”

“Oh my god let’s watch Twilight!” Veronica exclaimed, bouncing.

“Ooh, I’ll watch Twilight,” Kevin said poking his head through the door. 

“We’re gonna watch it ironically,” Betty said, patting the bed beside her and opening her arms.

Kevin sat down and snuggled into her embrace. “Of course you are. Jughead’s here.”

“I’ll have you know,” Jughead said, leaning over Betty’s lap to poke Kevin in the chest, “the only thing I ever did ironically was trying to learn to skateboard in eighth grade.”

“Hey!” Archie said poking his head through the open door. “Margie, Polly and I are gonna go see this band Margie likes. Anyone else wanna tag along?”

Veronica gave all of them a searching look, then said, “I think we’re gonna stay here and watch a movie.” Three voices chorused their agreement. 

Archie shrugged. “Suit yourself. Cheryl’s pretending she’s not interested but I’m pretty sure she’s coming too. You want us to bring you back anything, Jug?”

Jughead’s brow furrowed in thought before he said, “A cupcake. A strawberry cupcake. With cream cheese frosting.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Archie said, laughing. 

Polly and Margie both shoved their way into the room to pass out hugs and say goodbye. Margie promised she’d do her best to help Archie find the right cupcake, and then everyone was piling out of the bedroom and out of the suite. 

“Well I can see why you keep Margie around,” Kevin said as he reached for the TV remote. 

Betty made a cooing noise. “I know! Isn’t she just the best?”

The silence that descended was heavy and awkward and Kevin and Veronica exchanged a loaded look. Turning to Betty, Veronica asked, “Do you not see it?”. 

Kevin shook his head. “I don’t think she sees it.”

Betty gave Jughead a look, which he answered with a shrug. “Apparently I don’t see it either.”

“Betty,” Kevin said gently, putting down the remote and sitting up to take both her hands in his. “Sweet, trusting, darling Betty. Margie and Archie are the same person.”

“I- no,” Betty spluttered. “No they’re not! That’s ridic- how could, I mean - I think I would have noticed!”

“Sports scholarship?” Kevin said gently. 

Betty took her hands back and crossed her arms. “So? Lots of people get sports scholarships.”

“So they can study music?” Veronica asked. 

“It’s just a weird coincidence. Right? Juggie?”

Jughead’s response was a surprisingly illuminating, “Holy shit.”

“See?” Ronnie exclaimed. “Friendly, but sort of obtuse? Well-meaning and generally sweet but a little careless? If Archie Andrews had been a girl he’d be Margie Dozier.”

“Well I guess that explains the attraction,” Jughead said finally when Betty maintained her silence.

“What are you talking about?” Veronica asked, leaning over to pick up the remote from where Kevin had dropped it on the bed. “Bearing in mind that if this is some weird confession about your dormant attraction to either of them, I’d advise you to keep quiet.”

Jughead laughed. “No, not me. Them. To each other.”

Betty and Kevin shared a look before Betty asked, “Margie… and Archie?”

“They were joined at the hip all night,” he pointed out. 

“I think that was probably just a kindred spirits thing,” Kevin said, smiling. 

“Nope,” Jughead insisted. “Uh-uh. Margie flat out asked me what I thought her chances were.”

“With… Archie?” Betty said, pausing again before her friend’s name. 

He nodded. Kevin laughed, and Betty shook her head. 

“Jughead,” Kevin said gently. “Margie is family.”

Jughead frowned. “What does that have to do with her liking Archie?”

“No, Jug,” Betty said. “Kevin means she’s _family_. She’s a lesbian.”

Several things from the night before clicked into place. “Oh my god,” he breathed. “She was talking about Cheryl.”

Kevin said, eyes flickering over the screen, “That makes way more sense.”

“Because just like Archie, she’s obsessed with beautiful girls who are going to break her,” Veronica mumbled flipping through the TV channels. “Okay, do we want Fifty Shades of Grey, or Grown Ups 2?”

“Fifty Shades!” Betty and Kevin both exclaimed. Jughead made an unhappy noise, but settled back against the pillows, and Veronica scooted up on the bed to lay her head against Betty’s stomach and throw her legs over Kevin’s. Betty leaned her head against Jughead’s shoulder, and he put an arm around her. 

“Are you comfy?” she asked as the opening credits began to roll. 

He smiled, drowsy and kissed the top of her head. “Never better.”

Craning her head backward, Veronica looked at him and said, “You got hit by a car yesterday.”

Jughead laughed. “Shut up and watch the shitty movie Veronica.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story is rooted deeply in my own personal experiences, up to and including losing people in bars, climbing into fountains, mixing drugs and alcohol, saying shit you don't mean when drunk, and perhaps most importantly - my good friends who dated all through high school, broke up in college, then just couldn't fucking stay away from each other. 
> 
> They're married now. 
> 
> Fuckers.


End file.
